This invention concerns “searching programs” executed by computers, and in particular a system for identifying objects by their observed or measured characteristics or selecting objects from a relatively large pool of possibilities by particular desired characteristics. As one specific type of implementation, the invention is applied to an electronic field guide, operating on both portable and desktop computing devices, in which objects existing in nature can be identified by entering their various observed characteristics, thus narrowing the field down to a single possibility. Examples of electronic field guides would include, but are not limited to, guides to birds, insects, shells, trees or flowering plants. The present invention is equally applicable to other collections of objects, including, as examples, coins, stamps, works of art, fingerprints, cars and movie reviews.
In today's modern, technological society, where most work is done in factories, offices or service professions, only a narrow group of academics depend directly for their livelihood upon the observation or accurate identification of natural objects. The general population, however, far from being unconcerned about nature, remains deeply interested in the natural world. For well over a century, the public has used popular printed field guides to assist them in identifying the animals, plants and other natural features they observe.
The history of field guides to birds provides an important example of how printed guides are used, as well as how they have changed and improved through technological advances, particularly via optics, printing and mass communications. The first true field guide to birds, entitled Birds Through an Opera Glass, was published in 1889 by Florence Merriam Bailey, who was wife to the famous zoologist, Vernon Bailey, and sister of C. Hart Merriam, who was the first chief of the U.S. Biological Survey. The use of the “opera glass” in the field, as opposed to the more standard approach of killing a bird, then measuring it, reflected a new approach to identifying species that the author wished to promote.
The availability of relatively inexpensive, mass-produced binoculars made it possible for even amateur naturalists to make a reasonable pass at field identification, provided they had clear and accurate descriptions of the local species. Florence Bailey's field guides, which included regional and beginners' bird guides, provided the needed information on bird dimensions, distribution, food and nesting—features that are found in today's field guides as well. However, there were limitations to these early efforts. The birds were presented scientifically in taxonomic order, so the observer needed to have at least a general sense of which family the bird belonged to. Plus, because of printing costs at the time, illustrations in these books were few and in black-and-white.
Over the next several decades, the burgeoning conservation movement helped propel a growth in popular interest in bird-watching. During the 1930's, one of America's foremost ornithologists, Professor Ludlow Griscom, who was Research Curator of Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology, demonstrated that it was possible to make scientifically reliable field identification of birds with observation, using binoculars, and not just using measurements on collected specimens. Encouraged by Griscom, his student, artist and bird watcher Roger Tory Peterson, assembled and published in 1934 the first truly modern field guide to birds, entitled A Field Guide to the Birds. What is now called the “Peterson System” and what made it different from other field guides of the day, is that it organized species information not on the basis of taxonomy or scientific classification, but on the basis of visual characteristics observable in the field. Peterson grouped visually similar species together on a single page, and used hand-drawn arrows to draw the reader's attention to the key field marks that distinguished one species from another. His great skill as an illustrator made these marks evident even to the birding novice and recent advances in color printing technology ensured that Peterson's groundbreaking field guide was widely affordable.
Peterson's identification method, moreover, proved so useful with birds that it soon found application in other areas of the natural world, and the Houghton Mifflin Field Guide series alone now has over 40 titles. The method has also been useful in identifying man-made objects; while Peterson was in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers during World War II, he was requested to apply his field mark technique to a plane-spotting manual.
Field guides published today still provide the same basic elements as those produced decades back: an identification system based on field marks; skillful color illustrations to assist in distinguishing similar species; and extensive information about the morphology and ecology of the species. The usability of these books has, in recent years, been considerably enhanced by such features as thumb-indexing, color-coded edge tabs, or weather-protected covers and paper, laminated supplements, more durable bindings and other physical enhancements.
The printed field guide, even with the improvements possible with modern printing and publishing methods, still suffers from some inherent limitations. First, a print field guide is necessarily incomplete. No book-based guide could possibly contain information on all bird species and subspecies and remain either portable or affordable. Guides therefore make selections. They focus on broad geographic regions (such as the Field Guide to the Birds of California), and include as many species as possible. But regions in transitional areas may need two or even three regional field guides for reasonable coverage. Further, natural variation so great that it is impractical to show all the seasonal and regional variants for each species.
Secondly, print guides are static. Over the lifespan of an edition of a field guide, scientific knowledge about species increases, ranges and migration patterns change, variants and sometimes even species are reclassified, the conservation status of a species may improve or decline. Publishers may make corrections and changes in subsequent printings of a book, but all the units already in circulation can't be updated, and will preserve the old information.
Third, print guides are limited organizationally, because they can only arrange all their information into a sequential series of pages in one or two ways. Commonly the field guide book has two principal sections: an introduction to the major groups with an overview of the major identification characteristics, or field marks; and a second section, comprising most of the book, which contains the individual species illustrations and descriptions. These descriptions may be organized by taxonomy or by some key morphological characteristic or by habitat. Whatever the organization, extensive indexing and cross-referencing is necessary, so field identification using printed guides almost always requires slow, manual page-turning and section jumping. This means a bird, for example, may disappear before the desired page is found.
Fourth, print-based field guides are limited to only two media types—image and text. Bird calls constitute a critical identification feature, and although many print-based systems to represent calls have been utilized, such as onomatopoetic transcription and even sonograms, there is no substitute for an actual, recorded sound to assist in identification. Similarly, bird movements, especially flight patterns and movements, are also important distinguishing field features, and a static print image can, at best, only suggest what a bird in flight would look like. And fifth, anyone reading a printed book has no way of knowing about others who are reading the same book, and thus sharing information among readers is limited to people physically getting together, which is not always practical.
Electronic field guides could not only present, in a page-like format, all the information contained in conventional, printed field guides, but they could, potentially, also overcome the limitations of print. Being electronic, rather than physical, they could be expanded and updated periodically, even instantaneously; they could sort and present information in a variety of ways; and they might also include sounds and animated images along with text and standard illustrations. They could be linked to web sites over the internet for expanding the information available; and they could also be linked into peer-to-peer networks, allowing the sharing and updating of observed data, in the same way that many people currently share their favorite music tracks over the internet.
The ever-larger numbers of people seeking out-of-doors recreation, combined with the public's increasing comfort with computers and other portable electronics, suggests that there would be a substantial market for electronic nature-guide products that enhance the printed field guide with improved search and media capabilities. Preferably, such products would replicate the tried-and-tested use patterns of printed field guides. They would employ efficient search and selection procedures based on readily observable characteristics, like the field marks found in modern field guides to identify birds. In addition, they would ideally run on a variety of technology platforms, which would allow them to serve the printed guide's multiple functions of field identification, general reference and education about the natural world.
Such electronic nature guide products could also serve as identification or selection guides to collections of other kinds of items, such as stamps, coins, automobiles, works of art or even movie reviews.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that 42 to 50 million Americans over 16 years of age watch birds, representing an enormous possible market for innovations in field guides. Publishers and software developers have responded to the public interest in electronic nature guides by creating a wide range of products that run on several technology platforms, and with features and functions that meet a broad range of consumer and professional needs. These products fall into five main categories: 1) internet-based reference sites to the natural world; 2) CD-ROM- and DVD-based nature guides; 3) database or search programs for personal computers that contain species information; 4) specialized (dedicated) portable electronic devices to assist field identification and data collection; and 5) field identification software systems that can run on mobile computing devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), Palm devices, Pocket PCs and SmartPhones.
In addition to these electronic nature guides, there are also numerous internet- and computer-based systems that may not be specifically implemented as nature guides, but that provide search, selection and display functions of items within a collection. Such systems could serve as software engines for electronic nature guides if they were populated with natural history content, although not with the functions and efficiency of the present invention.
Many internet sites provide the type of information contained in printed field guides, and one of the most comprehensive of these sites is enature www.enature.com. This site presents 13 field guides from the Audubon series, including amphibians, birds, butterflies, fishes, insects, mammals, reptiles, seashells, seashore creatures, spiders, trees, wildflowers and native plants. To find information on a particular species, the internet visitor employs a simple, two-tier selection system. First, the user selects from a listing of 14 general types of birds (such as long-legged waders, upright-perching water birds, duck-like birds, etc.). This produces a listing of individual species, with thumbnail photo images. If the list is longer than 15 items, it is spread over several connected pages. Selecting one of the species on the list produces a larger photo, along with species information, range maps and a sound clip of the bird's call. The site also offers an Advanced Search mode, which allows the user to select species on the basis of type, plus up to four other attributes simultaneously: color, size, habitats and region. While the enature.com site serves well as a comprehensive natural-history reference source, and derives from a respected series of field guides, it is not designed or intended to help with field identification. First, it lacks a multi-level search engine, and does not support searching through the list of species and selecting on the basis of field markers such as eye color, wing span, bill type, crown pattern, etc. Second, using the Advanced Search method may result in zero matches, because it is possible to select combinations of attributes that no bird in the database possesses. Further, the system requires a constant live internet connection, which may be impractical in a field setting.
Another relevant internet site is the Biodiversity Institute's “Internet Field Guide to Birds,” (http.//www.bdi.org) which allows the user to identify birds on the basis of particular characteristics. The system supports searches on more than 40 attributes, including the bird's geographic area, common or scientific name, body characters, wing characters, head characters, tail characters and leg/foot characters. Knowing only a few of the bird's attributes is still enough to narrow down the list of possibilities to a reasonable size. Extensive information, plus one or more photos, are available for each species. In addition, the site can produce a checklist of all bird species in a designated area, and supplies information for all species within a selected group, such as all the Owls. Most of the detailed information on a particular species is supplied through an affiliated site, the NatureServe Explorer. Like the enature.com site, the Internet Field Guide to Birds provides an excellent reference service, though it is clearly targeted at a more advanced audience that already knows something about birds and field identification. Its principal limitation is that it is an “all at once” type of search engine, e.g., it requires entering all the search criteria into an Advanced Search page. Once the search button has been clicked, the user can only refine the search by starting over. Secondly, it requires an internet connection and standard internet browser software, so it can not readily be brought into the field. Thirdly, the search may result in no matched birds if the wrong combination of characeristics is entered.
Other internet sites, discussed below, offer search, select and display functions similar to those required for an electronic nature guide, but whose content consists of objects drawn from many interest areas, including electronic products, automobiles and potential male/female relationship matches. A second important format for electronic nature guides is embodied as a multimedia CD-ROM or DVD disc that runs on standard personal computers. Publishers of print field guides often produce multimedia versions in collaboration with other organizations that supply additional content or else production or distribution services. One of the premier multimedia sets is The Guide to Birds of North America, V3, which was produced jointly by Thayer Birding Software (one of the leading bird field guide publishers) and the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. This multi-disc set includes the complete collection of 930 birds seen in the U.S. and Canada, and contains thousands of color photos, songs for hundreds of species, and many video clips. The software is also designed to help in bird identification. The user selects the color, size, habitat or location of a bird, and the software presents a list of possible matches. Other similar CD-ROM versions of popular field guides are available for the Peterson Field Guides (Peterson Multimedia Guide to North American Birds) and for the Audubon Guides (National Audubon Society's Interactive CD-ROM Guide to North American Birds). Generally, these CD-ROM sets are straightforward conversions of the print-based guides, enhanced with sound, video clips, additional reference material and some interactive components such as games and quizzes. However, the species identification process with the CD version is essentially the same as using the print guide because the advanced search capabilities of the computer have not been utilized. Even though these multimedia CD or DVD packages could, in theory, be brought into the field on notebook computers equipped with optical drive bays, the software is not specifically designed to support rapid field identification. Their intention, rather, is to serve as reference and as an education platform that assists the field birdwatcher only indirectly.
A third major product category of electronic nature guides consists of software that is not simply a multimedia version of a print field guide, but a specially designed database program that allows a personal computer user to search, organize and display species-related information in a variety of ways. An example of this type of product is YardBirds, one of several products from Ramphastos (http://www.ramphastos.com/) that are distributed on CD-ROM. The product allows the identification of birds by over 100 combinations of attributes, such as head color, size and feeding style. The system begins by presenting a picture of a common sparrow, which is actually an image map—that is, an interactive graphic capable of presenting the user with different bits of information, depending upon where the computer cursor is positioned. With YardBirds, the user rolls a mouse pointer over different areas of the illustration, and when the pointer is above a searchable “field mark,” an identifying text label appears on screen. In the “Novice” mode, the labels are limited to the larger body parts; for example, while you can click on the head, you can't click on the eye. In the “Experienced” mode the labels become more granular and you can pick smaller marks, such as the eye. An alternative way to select “marks” in YardBirds is via drop-down menus and scrolling windows.
YardBirds uses a step-wise, narrowing approach to searching. For example, prior to searching, the system notes in a window that there are “478 birds to chose from.” If the user selects a field mark, such as eye color, and then selects “white” as a value, the program searches for only those birds with white eyes. The display then indicates “2 birds to choose from.” The user can now choose a second field mark, and the program will further narrow the search. However, because all the field marks are presented at once in the drop-down menu, it is possible to select a mark that has no effect on the search results. Irrelevant or redundant attributes are not automatically eliminated in this system, and the user has no way of knowing that the field mark is useless unless the search is actually performed. YardBirds does, however, eliminate redundant or irrelevant values for particular “field marks” or attributes. For example, if the user chooses a bill color of black, the program will present eight possible bill shapes; if a bill color of blue is chosen, there will only be two possible bill shapes displayed.
YardBirds does not present images of the birds that remain as possible matches; instead, the user must click a button labeled “See Bird” or click on a drop-down menu to see the birds' names. Once the “See Bird” button has been activated, the user is unable to go back and refine the search.
In addition to interface limitations that make field use difficult, the YardBirds program requires a standard personal computer to run, and is not designed for mobile computing devices smaller than a conventional notebook computer. This makes the program unsuitable as a replacement for a print field guide. Moreover, YardBirds is not available as a remote service over the internet, so a user's access is restricted to the computing systems on which the software has already been installed. In addition, the YardBirds database is static; the user can't edit or add to the information supplied by the manufacturer, other than a simple journal facility to append notes.
Another PC-based, interactive identification program is IntKey, which is used principally by professional biologists and taxonomists. It was developed by Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO). The program is used to identify the taxon to which a specimen belongs. Identification is by a process of elimination using an interactive system of “keys,” which are hierarchically organized sets of characteristics commonly used by biologists to identify species. (The program's name is a shortened version of “Interactive Keys.”) Initially, IntKey presents is a list of characteristics that can be used to identify the specimen, and a list of all the possible specimens. When a characteristic is selected, a window with the possible values is presented and the user selects the value that describes this characteristic of the specimen the user is looking for. Once selected, IntKey filters out all the candidate specimens that do not fit the description of this characteristic; the user is presented with one window with a list of all the candidate specimens remaining and a count, and another window with a list of all the candidate specimens that have been excluded and a count. The process is repeated until the candidate list is narrowed down to the one the user is looking for.
A limitation to this program, from the perspective of the amateur field identifier, is that there is nothing to stop the user from selecting a characteristic that is not valid for any of the remaining candidates, so that all the candidates will be excluded. Also, there could be a characteristic offered where the same value applies to all the remaining candidates, so that by selecting it, the user would not reduce the candidate list at all. In addition, because the software runs only on PCs, it is not easily portable into the field environment.
Another non-PC interactive identification program is NaviKey, an internet-based application that was developed at Harvard University (but is no longer available or supported). NaviKey begins by offering the user a list of characteristics and a list of candidates. The user selects a characteristic and is then given a list of possible values. The user selects the appropriate value. All the candidates that do not meet this criterion are removed, and the list of candidates is reduced. So far, NaviKey appears similar in operation to IntKey; where it differs is that once the candidate list has been reduced, any characteristics that no longer apply to the candidates remaining on the list are eliminated from the characteristics list. Thus, when the user wishes to select the next characteristic, the irrelevant characteristics are gone; the only characteristics remaining on the list are those that are applicable to the remaining candidates, and thus are useful in further reducing the candidate list. This iterative approach will never end in a null result (no candidates remaining), and every new criterion added to the step-by-step selection process will always help to reduce the remaining candidate list. Like IntKey, NaviKey is aimed more at the biology professional than at the amateur naturalist. Because it is an exclusively web-based system, it is intended for desktop operation, and can not serve as a remote, field-based identification system.
A fourth product category of electronic nature guides includes dedicated portable electronic devices that are specially designed to assist the work of both amateur and professional field observers in identification and data collection. The Identiflyer, for example, is a single-purpose, portable electronic device that helps identify birds from their songs. The hand-held unit accepts interchangeable song cards, each containing ten bird songs, and presenting color images and information about those species. Bird songs, however, represent only one of many attributes needed for proper field identification, so this unit could never replace a true field guide.
A fifth product category of electronic nature guides includes field identification software systems that can run on mobile computing devices such as personal digital assistants, Pocket PCs and SmartPhones. For example, U.S. Patent Publication 2002/0152225, “Method and System for Provisioning Electronic Field Guides” outlines a procedure for downloading selected multimedia content from a stationary, desktop personal computer to a portable, hand-held computer, such as a Palm device. The multimedia content consists, in this instance, of bird songs and pictures. The value of the claim is that the fixed computer is more powerful than the handheld unit, and it is capable of storing vastly more data. The user would interact with the fixed computer and select which multimedia data gets downloaded into the hand-held unit. Just those sounds and images pertaining to a certain geographical region could be sent to the portable device, thereby saving it much processing work. Once this data has been downloaded to the portable device, the user can click on names of regions and hear or see the birds in that region. The patent notes that the connection for these downloads from the stationary computer to the portable computer may not just be hard-wired but may be via any communications network, including telephones or wireless networks. A limitation of this system as an aid in field identification is that there is no facility for searching or selecting individual species on the basis of observed attributes.
Software systems that are currently used to search, select and display items from collections may be used with of many different kinds of objects, not just those that are the subject of nature study. For example, Match.com (www.match.com), one of the more popular dating-service web sites, is a search engine specially designed for singles seeking singles. The site allows members to enter specific information about their likes and dislikes, health, education and other personal information. The web site also provides a detailed search engine for helping the user find others possessing the criteria they are interested in. In this mode the searcher is required to fill out a form containing about 20 questions. The answers are used by the system to help narrow choices among the membership. Questions include, for example: “Show me profiles within 5, 10, 25, etc. miles of my zip code”; “Select one of 14 hair color choices”; and “Select from eight body types.” These are equivalent to attributes in a nature guide. Entering all the information takes about ten minutes. Once the user has filled out the form and clicks the GO button, the Match.com system returns photos of all the people that meet the user's criteria, with links to the forms that they filled out so the searcher can learn more about them.
There are important similarities between the Match.com system (and the many internet systems like it) and the way that the user of a field guide selects from a large population of candidates on the basis of specific characteristics or attributes. The limitation of this system, from the electronic field guide perspective, appears when the searcher wishes to refine the selections. Match.com works like most internet-based search engines; it presents the user with a large and fixed set of choices each time a search is performed. For example, if the user starts out asking for all females with blue eyes and blond hair who are within 10 miles of a zip code, Match.com will present all matches in the database that have those criteria. The user will get back every female in this area of every age, education, health, body type and so on, with blond hair and blue eyes. Now if the user wishes to select from this group just those women with a slender body type, he will have to go back and perform the entire search over. Step-by-step reduction of the field is not possible.
A further limitation of this “all at once” type of search and selection system becomes apparent if there are NO women with a slim body type who also match the other criteria that were previously entered. Because the information form Match.com presented to the user always includes slender body type as a possible selection, the user has no way of knowing that it is a waste of time to select that criterion, given his other preferences. There may be many other “irrelevant” criteria that are no longer found in the user's search, but since the search form remains static, this will not be apparent. For example, the user who selected women with blond hair, blue eyes and within 10 miles of his zip code may go back and remove slim body type as a criterion and replace it with “age between 35 and 40 years old.” If there are no women with those criteria, then the system again returns zero matches. This “no matches found” result can be a particularly frustrating experience. It is, however, a functional characteristic of many internet- and PC-based search programs.
Another internet web site with search and select capabilities is CNET, which provides extensive reviews and technical data for consumer electronics goods. The basic premise of the site is to allow selecting a few preferred products from a large collection of similar products on the basis of key personal preferences, specifications and features. For example, users interested in notebook computers would select that area of the site from the CNET home page, and would be presented with an initial notebook selection page. Here, the user may make an initial selection on the basis of just two significant attributes: “price range” and “manufacturer.” (The number of attributes appearing on the initial selection page will vary with product category.)
Once the initial attribute selection has been made, the system displays the number of matches found in the entire collection of notebook computers, and the first 10 products on the match list. Further attribute selections are made by using filters that appear as drop-down boxes that display a range of values. The number of filters on this page will vary by product category; for notebook computers, there may be nine filters: Price, Manufacturer, Processor, Clock Speed, RAM, Hard Drive, Weight, Screen Diagonal, and OS provided. Filters may be selected either one at a time, narrowing the number of matches down in a step fashion, or several filters may be selected simultaneously.
However, as in the case of the Match.com site, it is possible to obtain zero matches using the CNET system because once the user has passed the initial selection page, all attribute filters are always available, even ones that are irrelevant, and no values are eliminated. In addition, if multiple filters are used simultaneously, it is not possible to tell which combination of attribute values needs to be changed for valid matches to be produced. The system does, however, allow the application of one attribute filter at a time, and even though this does not eliminate the possibility of zero matches, it makes evident which attribute filter should be re-set in order to prevent an invalid search result.
Another approach to searching through object collections by ranking attributes is represented by U.S. Pat. No. 6,026,399, “System and Method for Selection of Important Attributes.” This describes a specialized data mining instrument for determining which attributes in a database are important for a particular search. First, the user chooses one attribute for analysis. The system then evaluates the relationship of this attribute to all the other attributes, and ranks each attribute in terms of how strongly it “correlates” with the first attribute. In an example of a collection of cars, if the first attribute chosen for analysis is “country of origin,” then the attribute “year” doesn't correlate strongly, because each country continues to produce cars each year. However, the attribute “brand” is strongly correlated with “country of origin,” because most car brands (like Volvo) originate in only one country. This system assigns a numerical value to these attribute correlations, and then creates a graphic representation for quick visual comparison.
This correlation patent differs from the search and selection process of an electronic nature guide because its function is not to identify a particular entity from a data set, but to provide a best-guess, recommended search path based on probability distribution. It does not include a method or process for grouping attributes, except as they are associated with another attribute. It does not include a method or system for displaying information about the item in the collection that is eventually identified. From a search or data-mining perspective, this invention is principally a procedure for organizing intermediate results, rather than a complete system for categorizing, searching, selecting, and displaying, as is necessary for a field guide embodiment.
A further approach to searching object collections by keyword searching within a taxonomy is presented in U.S. Patent Publication 2001/0047353, “Methods and Systems for Enabling Efficient Search and Retrieval of Records from a Collection of Biological Data.” This invention describes an internet-based search tool that allows navigation through a collection of bioinformatics data. The system performs a series of keyword searches with categorized search results, indicating the number of records in the bioinformatics data collection that remain within the parameters of a search. This allows users to disregard irrelevant information.
The search depends on having items that are classified, or categorized according to a hierarchy that divides the collection into large groupings, or taxonomies, with each taxonomy having multiple categories. For example, one taxonomy group would be “biological processes” and it would contain such categories as “cell communication” developmental processes. The user would input a keyword search term, such as “acid.” The system searches for the keyword term across one or more of the taxonomies, and displays search results by category, indicating how many records are associated with each. The keyword system, together with the different taxonomies, always provides users with a refined set of listings as results, without irrelevant, null-result searches.
This system differs from an electronic nature guide in that the basic search process is by a textual keyword, rather than by the various data-type values of a particular attribute. It is more suitable to searching through a collection of text objects (such as articles or abstracts of text materials) than searching through a collection of natural objects that are described by text, numerical, or other characteristics. Although it can run on a small-screen wireless device, it is not ideal as a field guide because it requires an internet connection, it uses keywords that are limited to text data types. Most importantly, the Publication 2001/004735 search protocol follows a hierarchical path of the pre-established taxonomy, while field guides use the system of “field markers” to speed identification, together with other attributes, such as region, habitat and behavior. These attributes are not hierarchical, and a search method that is built on a multi-tiered classification system is not well suited to field use.
Another approach to searching object collections by attribute elimination is represented by U.S. Patent Publication 2002/015220, “System and Method for Retrieving Information Pertaining to Product.” The system relates to product information retrieval via the internet, with a specific instance of sealant and adhesive products. To establish parameters for the search, the system prompts the user for information (like industry designation) that would reduce the search. The query will specify multiple search criteria that define the desired product's properties. If the product is not available, the system will search for and present alternative products that are related to the unavailable product. A “compare products” feature is also incorporated, which displays the various properties of the selected products.
To make the search more efficient, and avoid the problem of specifying sets of criteria that produce no results, the system responds to the user's initial selection by changing the choices available in subsequent selections. The user's choice of one value in a pull-down menu may change the list of values displayed in subsequent pull-down menus, eliminating values that the first choice has made irrelevant. This feature is claimed to be advantageous because it presents only real options, and avoids the need for the user to evaluate many irrelevant menu items.
The system of the above publication proposes to implement the value elimination process by storing several fixed menu listings for each pull-down selection box, together with the input parameters that would call for each specific menu. All of these menu listings must be specified by the database designer ahead of time. Because the program does not dynamically evaluate the choices at each step, and generate listings based on this step-wise evaluation, this implementation is practical only for a very small number of steps in a selection process, so it is not well suited for use as a field guide. In addition, the system does not eliminate attributes that become irrelevant or redundant as the user proceeds through a search sequence. Further, the selection process is closely coupled with a user registration and order processing system, which makes it more suitable to online commerce applications, rather than reference. Finally, the system entirely web-based, and requires a live internet connection, so it is not well adapted to remote field identification.
The above-described approaches to electronic nature guides, portable field guides and searching and object identification programs exhibit entirely different procedures for searching, selecting and displaying objects as compared to the invention described below. These differences include: the variety of technology platforms on which the invention runs; the types of multi-media data that may be used as a basis for searching and identification; the nature of the search process; the ability to share information among users of the system; the ability to eliminate redundancy at various stages of the search, once initial choices have been made that reduce the number of possible matches among the remaining objects; the ability to avoid zero or null results; and the ability to eliminate non-essential attributes and values.